


What We Live Through

by CellarDoorFive



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kuron is mentioned, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, mostly just the comfort though, takes place after things has calmed down back on earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 12:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16326035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CellarDoorFive/pseuds/CellarDoorFive
Summary: Shiro has a hard time coming to term with the fact that the body he is inhabiting is not the one he was born in. Lance helps him process it a bit.





	What We Live Through

“What was he like?”

Lance glanced over at him quickly, clearly caught by surprise. It was only the two of them left in the common area, and the credits of the movie they had all been watching were rolling idly by on the screen. They were sitting in one of the couches, both comfortably reclined and scrolling idly on a pad each.

“What was who like?” Lance asked, even though Shiro suspected he knew from the tightening of his shoulders. Shiro kept a firm grip on his pad, letting his gaze stray back to the screen every so often to appear as casual as possible. His grip on the pad was turning white.

“The other me. The… clone.”

“Ah.” Lance sighed, put his pad down, and fidgeted on the couch. “He was a lot like you I guess. I mean – of course he wasn’t  _ you _ you – but…”

“But you didn’t notice the difference.” Shiro made sure to keep any accusation out of his voice, but it mostly left him sounding dead and defeated; Lance visibly flinched.

“Hey now, I didn’t mean it like that.” He raised his hand to Lance’s shoulder and forced a smile to his lips, “It’s not as if you guys were looking for something to be wrong. And he did have my memories.”

Lance relaxed an inch, but his shoulders were still tense.

“He was angry, you know. Had a shorter temper than you.”

Shiro raised his eyebrows in surprise; he had not heard this before. He finally gave up his efforts to appears nonchalant and put his pad down on the table before turning more fully towards Lance.

“We just thought it was because…” Lance trailed off uncertainly and looked away. “You know no one would blame you right? If you showed a bit more anger... We would understand.”

Shiro was at a loss for words. He always tried to be strong for the team, to keep it together, but he had never imagined that it was something other people spent time thinking about. Before he could comment, however, Lance drew a deep breath and continued.

“And a lot of stuff happened when he was around, and we were all under a lot of pressure, but we should have noticed—”

“What did I tell you about blaming yourself, Lance?”

“Sorry.” Lance looked back at him, and Shiro was relieved to see a warm smile teasing the corners of Lance’s eyes. “Honestly, I’m just happy that you’re back for real this time.”

Shiro returned the smile with a big one of his own, but it faded fast, and he turned away from Lance to hide it.

“You okay?”

Of course he would notice. This was Lance after all. Shiro let the smile fade entirely and turned back to him.

“Honestly I don’t know what to think.” Shiro looked down at his hands resting in his lap; one made of metal and one made of flesh. They looked like the same hands that he remembered, but they weren’t truly his, where they? This wasn’t even his body. Shiro clenched both fists and breathed deeply before continuing, “He… he was alive. Just as much as I am. And he thought he was me.”

Lance scoffed. “Yeah, until he tried to kill us all.”

“On Haggar’s order. He was brainwashed, Lance. Made to do it. He didn’t know. That’s why he was able to fool you all; he truly thought he—"

“Shiro. Shiro, listen to me. It doesn’t matter if he thought he was you. He wasn’t. He had your memories, sure, but they weren’t his. He never lived through them. You did.”

“So, if he was less of a person for not having lived what he remembered – for having memories but not the experience – then what does that mean for me that has the experience, but not the memory? Am I also less of a person for that?”

Lance stared back at him, and Shiro sighted. “I’m sorry Lance, that was unfair of me, I should—"

“It’s a fair question to ask,” said Lance, interrupting him. “And you know what? I don’t think that you can separate one from the other. If you have lived through something it’s probably going to affect you, even if you don’t remember all of it. But how things you remember, but haven’t lived through, affects you hasn’t really been studied, right? I mean, you took some courses in psychology. What did they say about memory?”

“It’s a field that’s still not fully understood.”

“Precisely, so we shouldn’t waste time worrying about something that we don’t know is true. For all we know he could have been as little Shiro as Pidge, or Coran.”

“But I still took his body.”

“Not to be too harsh, dude, but he was already dead. Think of it as recycling.”

Shiro stared at him for a long moment, frown deepening, before he broke out into laughter. “Oh my god, Lance. That’s so inappropriate.”

Lance wiggled his eyebrows at Shiro and gestured to him. “Just remember that you, as a person, are a culmination of your experiences. I can’t say how many percent Shiro he was, but I can say that you are 100% Shiro, and we wouldn’t trade you for any other version.”

A wry smile spread over Shiro’s face. “He stole my life, and I stole his body.”

Lance slapped his arm. “That’s not funny Shiro!”

“Look who’s talking!”


End file.
